Overweight children in China, for drugmakers it's a boon! "While first borns start out smaller than siblings, they gain weight faster and are bigger as adults, a trajectory that increases obesity risk and may explain why China's diabetes prevalence has more than tripled in a decade, said Chong. "You have a whole group of first borns growing up in China who are all at a slightly higher risk for obesity and diabetes than in other societies," said Chong, an obstetrician who is investigating the origins of diabetes on the island-nation of Singapore, where 74 per cent of residents are ethnically Chinese.

Their findings will help shape new approaches to preventing diabetes and other chronic diseases that Health Minister Chen Zhu says threaten to sap the labor force and slow the pace of economic growth.

For drugmakers such as Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly, the metabolic condition is a boon for revenue. Sales of diabetes medicines in China will expand 20 per cent a year to reach $US3.2 billion by 2016, consulting firm IMS Health says."

I live a very healthy lifestyle. However, i am a full time volunteer in a public institution and am exposed on a regular basis to people who are sick with communicable diseases including all sorts of viral and bacterial illnesses. From time to time I catch one of these because I am regularly sneezed and coughed on. I have tried, at those times, to just use natural methods to get well. Sometimes this works. At other times it does not and at those times it is only modern antibiotics that have saved my life. Last year I became extremely ill with bronchitis but had decided that I would not use modern medicine. This was a mistake and ended up with my being bedridden for much longer than necessary.

The young may be able to overcome all illness on their own, though I doubt it having nursed others with cancer, heart failure etc., but I am old and my body no longer is able to deal with serious illness on its own. I have learned through experience to recognize that which can be overcome naturally and that which cannot. I could just choose to die naturally, I suppose, but I do not think that my work is finished yet.

I have found that absolutes such as all modern medicine is a racket or that all natural medicine is incapable of healing, are usually wrong. Between black and white there are many shades of gray.

Some slick operator in the USA is marketing 'Raspberry Ketone Ultra drops' as a sure fire weight loss program. I've been getting emails from overseas from excited friends about the product. Apparently the sales of the 'ultra drops' have gone wild. Upon further research I don't think there have been any respected clinical trials yet. It shows how deregulated the market has become.

NASA has invented a lightbulb that promises a remedy for sleepless nights at a cost of $450,000 each. The light strip is designed to help astronauts on the International Space Station, but the technology is expected to become available to the public in the next few years.

The bulb helps regulate the release of melatonin, the key sleep hormone, by changing colour in the night

Thrasymachus wrote: You don't see many doctors out there at the front line presenting medical objections against pollution from the new factory opening near a residential area, opposing new highways which will cause lung problems from all the increased particulate matter in the air, opposing the increasing work hours most people are undertaking which always takes a bodily and psychic toll, opposing nuclear plants, or doing anything in general to promote health in a preventative matter.

This struck me as a really interesting point. While I appreciate modern medicine in the event of trauma and injuries, their main objective does seem to be damage control. They are certainly not championing the cause for a healthier and environmentally safer community. I find it ironic to be in the hospital waiting room next to a vending machine full of junk food and sugar drinks.I've been scoffed at by medical 'specialists' for inquiring if there was an alternative to taking HRT (hormone replacment therapy). And don't even get me started about the number of doctors who've expressed 'concern' about being a vegetarian - if the people looking after our health believe in the propaganda from the big business meat, dairy and sugar industries (and not even talking about big pharma kickbacks) then it's hardly surprising we're getting fatter and sicker.

I get it - the job of doctors is to cut you open and sew you back up & get the bed freed up asap - but then what? This is what bothers me, there's a total disconnect between modern medicine and you, as not just a body part but a person with feelings and a history and lifestyle. I'm yet to feel like I've ever been treated like a 'whole person' by a medical professional.. just a body part or a diagnosis or a test result that that matches up with pricey medications.

What I'd like to see is doctors who recognise they can only offer a 'damage control' service - and are taught about traditional medicines/alternative therapies enough to offer a choice of referrals for preventative and holistic health care(instead of laughing in your face when you ask if there are alternatives to meds or surgery). It's a pretty big ask, but more likely (imo) than doctors taking diet, mental health, lifestyle and preventive health seriously themselves.

mandala wrote:[What I'd like to see is doctors who recognise they can only offer a 'damage control' service - and are taught about traditional medicines/alternative therapies enough to offer a choice of referrals for preventative and holistic health care(instead of laughing in your face when you ask if there are alternatives to meds or surgery). It's a pretty big ask, but more likely (imo) than doctors taking diet, mental health, lifestyle and preventive health seriously themselves.

Those doctors are out there - Dr. Oz is even on Oprah. You just have to do your research and find them. And be ready to travel, they will likely not be right around the corner from you. And be ready for them not to take your insurance (keeps costs down).

@mandala:I am glad another actual person read and actually understood what I said. Recently I landed a new job and during the orientation I asked if instead of receiving health insurance, they could just give me a bigger paycheck. My fellow co-workers scoffed and thought I was nuts. Later I observed almost all of them go into the cafeteria and drink soft drinks and eat whatever unhealthy crap they served there while I ate whole grain pasta, pasta sauce and nutritional yeast(what many vegans use as a healthier cheese alternative) I brought in.

People will just never get it, because they don't care to. The majority will always spend most their time with toying around with their cellphone constantly, watching tv, gossiping, etc. So they will continue to live poorly, baste in ignorance and love doctors. And when someone sees the illusions of their constructed world and calls them out: "How can you not believe in the wonders of modern technology and medicine ... how can you say my chronic health problems are my fault." Yeah, doctors can give you chance to sew your severed fingers back, but if there were no power-saws, automobiles and other modern miracles, we would not need most of such medical miracles anyway.

What you observe is true. Western thinking is based on a discrete and separate self. It sees the body and the world as a machine of production which can and should be understood as much as possible. You can tell a fool is a fool, because he thinks this scientific pursuit is a neutral, and noble pursuit, but the purpose is to create as much as top-down domination as possible and liquidate as many natural human behaviors and that which we call nature till only printed representations of life known as money are left. It is only too bad we have not figured a way to turn everything into value added products and money, but hopefully science, and in this example science based medicine can take us there one day. For example there is the concept of Taylorism -- before which working at a factory was very different, workers had to know and perform many different tasks, instead of one narrow one just for the sake of the greater efficiency of overall production. It is known that while this is more efficient, it leads to people being less happy and less emotional well-being. Can you name a single movement out of the modern medical professional to oppose Taylorism which is destroying everyone's psychological well-being and health?

Thrasymachus wrote:...They also proscribed me oral anti-biotics called Keflex. If they prescribed topical I would have used it, but I am not dumb enough to destroy all my beneficial gut flora and bacteria just because a doctor recommends to or because it might make the wound heal faster.

(There are more variants listed in the PDF which I didn't paste, but one gets the point.)

Needless to say that is toxic stuff and I am not putting it directly in my blood. I will leave that to others who baste in ignorance.

Nemo wrote:Your views on vaccination are entertaining. You should join the Flat Earth Society.

Are you implying that the ingredients Thrasymachus listed are not harmful? Or that the ingredients are not actually in the vaccines?

Well, the above-mentioned ingredients are not harmful if one is a Mahasiddha, because a Mahasiddha can transform anything. If one is not a Mahasiddha, then getting those vaccinations usually means injecting toxins into one's body (as I've said before, a vaccine might be justified when there really is a bad epidemic i.e. people are literally dropping dead all around us and/or IF a vaccine can be made without all those extra toxins; and only then).

Maybe vaccinations without the above-listed toxins exist somewhere, and if so I'd like to know who has them (and of course a Mahasiddha would have no need for vaccinations in the first place. I'm just saying that it would take a Mahasiddha—or someone close to that level—to be able to transform the toxins found in most contemporary drugs).

I'm also aware of the principle that 'poisons' can be used as 'medicines'. And this generally applies mainly to 'poisons' found in nature, not artificial toxins concocted in contemporary laboratories.

Anyway, since I'm not a Mahasiddha, I'll take Ayurveda and Tibetan Medicine over contemporary corporatist scientism's artificial chemicals any day.

(Himalaya herbs are all-natural and organic (i.e. free from artificial chemicals), even though they qualify as 'pharmaceutical grade')

And:

Himalayausa.com wrote:A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial was conducted on 40 subjects. Prior to the study, chemical parameters such as fasting blood sugar, cholesterol, weight and glycosylated HG (Alc) were measured. The group was divided into the Bitter Melon group and the placebo. The Bitter Melon group reported positive indications that Bitter Melon supports Alc and other parameters with no adverse side effects.*

Many depressed people report that antidepressants have been effective for them, but do antidepressants work any better than a sugar pill? Researcher Irving Kirsch (professor of psychology at the University of Hull in the United Kingdom as well as professor emeritus at the University of Connecticut and author of The Emperor’s New Drugs) has been trying to answer that question for a significant part of his career.

In 2002, Kirsch and his team at the University of Connecticut examined 47 depression treatment studies that had been sponsored by drug companies on the antidepressants Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Effexor, Celexa, and Serzone. Many of these studies had not been published, but all had been submitted to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), so Kirsch used the Freedom of Information Act to gain access to all the data. He discovered that in the majority of the trials, antidepressants failed to outperform sugar pill placebos.

“All antidepressants,” Kirsch reported in 2010, “including the well-known SSRIs [selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors], had no clinically significant benefit over a placebo.” While in aggregate, antidepressants slightly edge out placebos, the difference is so unremarkable that Kirsch and others describe it as “clinically negligible.”

Why are so many doctors unaware of the lack of superiority of antidepressants as compared to placebos? The answer became clear in 2008 when researcher and physician Erick Turner (currently at the Department of Psychiatry and Center for Ethics in Health Care, Oregon Health and Science University) discovered that antidepressant studies with favorable outcomes were far more likely to be published than those with unfavorable outcomes. Analyzing published and unpublished antidepressant studies registered with the FDA between 1987-2004, Turner found that 37 of 38 studies having positive results were published; however, Turner reported, “Studies viewed by the FDA as having negative or questionable results were, with 3 exceptions, either not published (22 studies) or published in a way that, in our opinion, [falsely] conveyed a positive outcome (11 studies).”

Most pharmaceutical drugs are the same. Infact they should be compared and tested against natural and cheaper alternatives like exposure to the sun long enough to synthesize Vitamin D, exercise, supplementation with vitamins and minerals, meditation, etc.

Probably the best thing for him to do is to contact the Hearing Voices Network in my estimation, the mental health field only pathologizes people. I know first hand from experience and from lots of reading and listening to critiques of their profession which in any society based on equality and freedom would be criminalized. Ghost01, in my experience and from lots of reading and listening to relevant podcasts, interviews and documentaries you did the best thing by minimizing contact with mental health crooks.

That makes very interesting reading and rings alarm bells. The pharma industry is far too manipulative and powerful!....

Not to mention all the harmful side-effects of artificial chemical pharmaceutical drugs.

So there we have it, natural Medicine such as Ayurveda and Tibetan Medicine are capable of passing unbiased double-blind tests and almost always have little to no side-effects, whereas contemporary drugs are more often than not the product of corporation-lobbied greed & scientism masquerading as "science". Proponents of scientism often cite peer-reviewed journals as if they are infallible, and how many writers of peer-reviewed journals are on the payroll of the big corporations....

Also a lot of the stuff on herd-immunity put out by government/corporatism/big-pharma can be shown to be biased nonsense too.

And before anyone mentions H.H. the Dalai Lama administering vaccinations (from another thread):

Lhug-Pa wrote:IF there is a major outbreak, then yeah maybe getting vaccinated could be Bodhisattva activity (perhaps H.H. the Dalai Lama was administering vaccines in that Youtube video because there was a major outbreak, and he knew that the vaccines he was administering were not full of the garbage listed in thispic...).

Lhug-Pa wrote:Well then maybe this is one of those very rare circumstances where vaccines might actually be useful, that is if administered without the mercury and other garbage often found in vaccines.

And I doubt H.H. the Dalai Lama would tell people that they should go and "get their flu-shot" at Walmart, or even that the average person should get any kind of regular vaccination.

Also, what allopathic prescription is he supposedly taking?

Anyway, the Dalai Lama often speaks to people of little understanding (i.e. the average person), and so perhaps his launching of vaccinations and taking allopathic medicine, etc. is only publicity; in other words a skillful means to show the average person that he's integrated with ordinary society and not a religious elitist etc. (not saying that he is a religious elitist, just saying that many people might view him as such). I don't think that many people know what H.H. the Dalai Lama's views are aside from what he says and writes about Dharma. When it comes to social issues, he has to appear to blend in with the mainstream. In other words, I think that when he writes about his views regarding Vajrayana and Dzogchen, he is telling us his actual precise views regarding Dharma. When it comes to social issues however, he has to use a lot of Skillful Means.

For example I don't think that H.H. the Dalai Lama is really a "Marxist" like he said. I think what he meant is that he would support a positive form of Socialism; and that he only said "I'm a Marxist" because Marxism is a term that the common person can relate to. And it seems that most Buddhists are left-leaning and sympathize with Marxism, hence H.H. the Dalai Lama's Skillful Means there.

(By the way, I'm not a spokesman or something for Himalaya; there are many other sources I go to for herbs and such. It's just that Himalaya is a good example of affordable Organic Ayurvedic Medicine that combines Traditional Medicinal Methods with Modern (not merely contemporary) Methods.)

"I'm also aware of the ancient principle that states that 'poisons' can be used as 'medicines'. A principle that is truly useful in the context of 'poisons' found in nature only, and not in the context of artificial toxins concocted in contemporary laboratories."

And in another thread about vaccines, the unfinished (and unargumentative) debate between Pema Rigdzin and I was interesting; so perhaps I'll try to continue it in this thread in the near future (to be honest, Pema Rigdzin, I don't know if I'll get to addressing it. Just saying that I'd like to)....